Sorry for your loss

It’s something we say when we don’t know what to say. Someone close to you has passed on. Words can’t make it better. We want to express our sympathy but words fail us so we rely on the old faithful:

Sorry for your loss.

You’ve lost a friend, a good friend. Someone you’ve known for years. Someone you’ve had adventures with, been through stuff with, experienced life with, shared secrets, and dreams. You’ve celebrated their birthdays and anniversaries. Spent time with their loved ones. Had many beers with late into the night, discussing anything and everything.

And now they are gone. Just like that.

Sorry for your loss.

As you get older it happens more and more. You are going to more funerals than weddings and celebrations. You hear it more and more. Loss. Your loss, their loss.

Sorry for your loss.

Conversations with the dead

The older you get the more conversations you can recall with the dead. I’m not being morbid here, I’m just remembering conversations I’ve had with people that are no longer here.

I can recall being sat at a table with four other people discussing the latest mobile phone screen technology, demonstrating a video of waves hitting a beach playing smoothly in the palm of my hand. Yet I am the only one of the five present for that conversation as the others have all since passed.

I can remember conversations with friends and colleagues over the years where I’m the only one still around to recall it. Like a failing RAID server with my mind the last media in the array, still holding onto the data, those memories.

It’s both a sad and happy thought at the same time. It’s sad that the others are no longer with us, but happy that I have those memories of them.

Occasionally my mind will trigger such a memory and I’ll recall conversations with people that are no longer here. No one else has those memories but me. The older I get the more such memories I share alone.